The electric guitar and bass are fundamentally analog instruments, and their electrical design has not changed appreciably over the last 50 years. With the advent of low-cost processing and computers, the ability to provide sophisticated musical interfaces has made exponential progress over the same period. The advantages that this technology can bring to the music world is well established in the keyboard world, where pianos have been transformed from a purely mechanical instrument into sophisticated music generators capable of sounding like any other instrument, and the cost has plummeted to where an electronic keyboard is available as an inexpensive consumer product. This same process cannot be said to be true in the electric guitar and bass world.